[speps]

Look at From Dust[1] for something like this with gameplay, more recent than Populous (Xbox 360 generation).

[1] https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/from-dust

[sdflhasjd]

I really liked From Dust. It seemed impressive what could be done on the 360 at the time, and I'd really like to see it with a higher-res, larger scale simulation on some more modern hardware.